![\"Horse](\"https:\/\/ginnyang.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/2013-03-23-19.41.12.jpg\")
<\/a>Doing a horse meat recipe on the site is a little risky.\u00a0 It probably won’t be a popular post and I doubt it will see much traffic but I thought since I went to the effort of buying horse meat and cooking it, I might as well share the experience.\u00a0 Some of you might be disgusted by the mere thought of eating horse, some might be interested in what it is like but are a little uneasy about the idea of it and finally some of you have already had horse meat, like it and want to know how to do it yourself.\u00a0 I’m not going to be able to say much if you are in the former of those groups, but for the latter two you’ll be surprised to hear it’s actually quite easy to get hold of horse meat in the UK.\u00a0 The supermarkets and most butchers won’t have it but you can easily order it online.\u00a0 Sadly delivery costs for meat are fairly high, so what is otherwise a cheap meat gets fairly expensive (unless you do what I did and buy a bunch of other exotic meats with it – water buffalo will be another recipe to cover!).\u00a0 I got my meat from Ank Marvin<\/a>, I looked at a couple of places and they seemed to come in at a good price with reasonable delivery costs and they only stock sustainable meat.\u00a0 There are other online butchers who will sell a whole range of exotic meats, so shop around.<\/p>\n I decided to buy two types of horse steak – haunch and fillet.\u00a0 Horse meat in general is sweeter, richer and more tender than beef while also being very lean.\u00a0 People often describe it as a mix between beef and venison and that’s about right.\u00a0 I dealt with the haunch first, as I felt it would be the tougher steak (much like rump vs fillet with beef).\u00a0 The first thing that I was struck by, is how lean the haunch is; if I was using a beef rump steak I would get an edge of fat all the way around, along with a few bits of gristle through the middle.\u00a0 With the haunch there was none of that, it was virtually pure meat.\u00a0 To the touch the haunch steak is thicker and tougher than horse fillet.\u00a0 Horse fillet is very tender and has almost no fat on it, aside from the very deep dark colour to the meat I would not have been able to tell it apart from beef fillet.<\/p>\n As I had never tried horse meat before, I went through the few horse recipes I could find.\u00a0 I decided I wanted to do something that would emphasise the flavour of the horse meat.\u00a0 Since I had two different steaks, I would do them two different ways.\u00a0 For the haunch I decided on a rosemary, garlic, chilli and white wine vinegar marinade.\u00a0 With the fillet, I picked a rice wine vinegar and soya sauce marinade.\u00a0 I didn’t want to marinade the meat too long as I wanted to taste the true flavour of the meat and not hide it!\u00a0 The vinegar based marinades would bring some acidity to the dish while enhancing the flavour, particularly the rice wine vinegar which is very good at bringing out the sweetness in an ingredient.\u00a0 To accompany the meat, I made a warm bean couscous.\u00a0 I had intended to use cannellini beans but I only had a can of mixed beans in the house so I used that instead.\u00a0 Couscous, as I mentioned in an earlier recipe, is fairly neutral in flavour.\u00a0 Together with the beans it gives a nice change in texture but is flexible enough to go with either of the marinades.\u00a0 Couscous also helps keep the meal light as horse is a very protein dense meat.<\/p>\n When it comes to cooking horse, you need to keep it short.\u00a0 A very high, intense heat for a short time is all it needs.\u00a0 As horse meat is so incredibly lean, it doesn’t have any fat to render so the longer you cook it, the tougher it gets.\u00a0 What starts out as a very tender cut of meat will soon become very tough, so I wouldn’t cook it any longer than medium to rare.\u00a0 A well-done horse steak without any larding or barding will be as tough as boot leather.\u00a0 I cooked the haunch for just over 3mins a side (as it was quite thick), the fillet I did for no more than 2mins per side and that was about medium-rare.\u00a0 Oddly, this meant the couscous takes the longest to cook.\u00a0 The entire cooking process for this recipe is done in 10mins flat – so if you want a quick and easy meal, this is it!<\/p>\n Ingredients (serves 2):<\/strong><\/p>\n 2x 150g Horse Haunch<\/p>\n 2x 150g Horse Fillet<\/p>\n 1x 400g Can of Cannellini \/ Mixed beans<\/p>\n 200g Couscous<\/p>\n 350ml Chicken Stock<\/p>\n 2 Sprigs of Rosemary<\/p>\n 1 Red Chilli<\/p>\n 1 Clove Garlic<\/p>\n 4 Tbsp Red Wine<\/p>\n 3 Tbsp Dark Soya<\/p>\n 3 Tbsp Extra Virgin Olive Oil<\/p>\n 1 Tbsp Light Soya<\/p>\n 2 Tsp Rice Wine Vinegar<\/p>\n 2 Tsp Light Brown Sugar<\/p>\n 1 Tsp White Wine Vinegar<\/p>\n 1 Tsp Sesame Oil<\/p>\n Small bunch of Coriander<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Method:<\/strong><\/p>\n 1.\u00a0 Start by making the marinade for the haunch steak.\u00a0 Chop and de-seed the chilli, then chop the garlic and pick the rosemary.<\/p>\n 2.\u00a0 Crush the rosemary, garlic and chilli in a mortar and pestle until it is a paste.\u00a0 Add 1 or 2 tbsp of the olive oil near the end to help.<\/p>\n 3.\u00a0 Combine the paste, remaining olive oil and the white wine vinegar along with some salt and pepper in a bowl and mix well.\u00a0 Then add the horse haunches, coating both sides and leave in the fridge for an hour and half, turning occasionally.<\/p>\n 4.\u00a0 Now make the marinade for the fillet steaks, mix the dark soya, light soya, rice wine vinegar and sesame oil in a bowl, add a pinch of salt and pepper.\u00a0 Then add the horse fillets, coat both sides and leave in the fridge for an hour to an hour and a half.<\/p>\n 5.\u00a0 Place the couscous in a bowl and add boiling chicken stock, stir and cover for 5mins.<\/p>\n 6.\u00a0 Open the can of beans and rinse with water, then add to the couscous, stir well and leave covered for another 5mins.<\/p>\n 7.\u00a0 Set a grill pan and a frying pan to a high heat, brush the grill pan with oil and add about 2 tbsp of oil to the frying pan.<\/p>\n 8.\u00a0 Once up to heat, start cooking the haunches first as they will usually be thicker.\u00a0 Cook for 2-4mins each side on the grill pan, depending on how you prefer your steaks.<\/p>\n 9.\u00a0 Once the haunches have been cooking for about 1min, add the fillets to the frying pan and again cook for 2-3mins.<\/p>\n 10.\u00a0 Remove all the steaks from the heat and keep warm, add a pinch of salt to the steaks if required.\u00a0 Then add the red wine, sugar and remaining fillet marinade to the frying pan, reduce to a syrup.<\/p>\n 11.\u00a0 Chop the coriander and add to the couscous, giving it a final stir before serving.\u00a0 Drizzle the red wine reduction over the horse fillets and plate the haunches on top of the couscous and serve.<\/p>\n Tips:<\/strong><\/p>\n – You could substitute the horse for beef (sirloin and fillet would work), although that defeats the point of trying horse meat, the marinades will work for beef as well as horse.<\/p>\n –\u00a0 Conversely, horse can often be used as a substitute for beef in most recipes, so if you try this and like it, it’s often easier to look for beef recipes and use horse as an alternative than to go searching for horse specific recipes.<\/p>\n –\u00a0 Some finely sliced ginger added to the couscous would add a nice twist to this dish.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Drinks Matching:<\/strong><\/p>\n Cocktail:<\/strong> White Russian – Creamy sweet with an alcoholic coffee hit.\u00a0 The higher alcohol content ensures that the creamy sweetness doesn’t linger but it still provides a nice contrast to the lean meat.<\/p>\n Regular Drink:<\/strong> Red Wine – Just like a beef steak, red wine matches nicely with this dish.\u00a0 A low tannin red is required, due to the low fat content and neutral couscous.\u00a0 Chianti Classico or a Loire Valley Cabernet Franc would match well.<\/p>\n Non-Alcoholic:<\/strong> Soda water and lime – It’s tough to match this one.\u00a0 The soda water is refreshing and the lime adds a bit of flavour.\u00a0 Coke or another sweet fizzy drink is going to be a little too sweet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" With all the recent news about ready made meals contaminated with horse meat, I wanted to try it for myself.\u00a0 Us Brits and the Americans revile horse meat but I’m not entirely sure why?\u00a0 I can understand the anger over eating horse meat when it was meant to be beef, especially when the horse isn’t the type bred for its meat; but I can’t understand why we don’t eat horse that is bred specifically for[…]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":951,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[33,37,5,19],"tags":[59,62],"class_list":["post-948","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lactose","category-main","category-recipes","category-west","tag-couscous","tag-horse"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/ginnyang.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/2013-03-23-19.42.05.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1PTCG-fi","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ginnyang.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/948","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ginnyang.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ginnyang.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ginnyang.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ginnyang.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=948"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/ginnyang.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/948\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1432,"href":"https:\/\/ginnyang.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/948\/revisions\/1432"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ginnyang.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/951"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ginnyang.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=948"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ginnyang.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=948"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ginnyang.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=948"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a><\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n